Pride

I've always been so smart, smarter than most of the other children in school. But as the years go by everyone surpasses me in intelligence, and I struggle to retain my status as "smart". But I am no longer the smart one, the intelligent one, the girl who knows what she is doing. It's hard for me, as I never used to have to try, and now must put forth so much effort for the simplest of concepts. And I screw myself over constantly because I think that I can master the material by absorbing the information presented in class but now that isn't enough and I don't want to admit it until it's too late, half the semester's gone by and I have no idea what I am doing. I try to catch up but there's just a mountain of information I must master on my own and looking at the most current things with my mind turning up blank intimidates me further. I create a huge obstacle for myself, so large that I have no choice but to deal with it but have no means to. It's too large of an issue for me by myself to handle. And to ask for help would be admitting to both myself and others that I alone have failed, that I am not handling things in the slightest on my own, that I created this huge problem for myself. It's all my fault and because of my inadequacies and bad habits that all of this is happening. And I don't want to tell other people that. Admit that to anyone else. Because they'd judge. Look down on me. As they should.